For me, this just by itself would be worth the cost of the upgrade. Drag n drop midi patterns back n forth from Groove Agent's new pattern sequencer (!!!) to Cubase's project page. Plus envelopes for pitch and filter (something I've been requesting for years). Good bye Battery, hello Goove Agent SE4!

hmmmmm groove agent 4 looks very good and I agree may be worth the update on its own ... for me anyway. maybe my go to drum sampler now cos i am familiar with it. but not use battery??? not sure ... all good steinberg .. you've done a lot this year!!! surely most should be pleased with the various upgrades, there has been something for the beginner and the veteran released

I can't wait until this Wednesday. To be honest, even if they didn't release 7.5 and just announced a "Holiday Plugin" special for $50 that included the new Groove Agent and the other plugins I would've purchased it. This along with Halion 5 is awesome. 2013 goes to Steinberg.

It seems that I remember reading that there was a new Groove Agent coming out anyway. Is this it? Or is this the "light" version and we can expect the heavy version later (as would seemingly be indicated by the SE in its name).

Brad Mize wrote:It seems that I remember reading that there was a new Groove Agent coming out anyway. Is this it? Or is this the "light" version and we can expect the heavy version later (as would seemingly be indicated by the SE in its name).

Re: Groove Agent announcement / UPDATE / JUNE 2013

Postby Matthias Quellmann » 11 Jun 2013 11:51

It’s time for an update on the Groove Agent 4 development. In the last post I gave some insight on the creation of the acoustic drum samples that will be part of the content library. But as I mentioned before Groove Agent 4 will introduce a new concept comprising well-known workflows but also new approaches to virtual drummers. An idea that was already featured in Groove Agent 3 will be revised and turned into a new approach. In GA4 there will be again multiple agents that will play on their own or along with other agents in sync. The idea is to have a drum workstation that can be loaded with agents that are “specialists” for specific styles, sounds and genres. The advantage is that each agent’s feature set is as simple or as complex as it needs to be without having to add all parameters or features on every instrument. Keeping it simple and intuitive is still on top of the list. The agent concept allows us to create instruments within Groove Agent with own personalities, including limits and strengths. Now think about what kind of agents you would like to see in Groove Agent!Most of you know Groove Agent ONE that has been included in Cubase for several years. We received a lot of positive feedback on the easy and straightforward concept that this little beat machine has to offer, although there are also a lot of suggestions on how to improve the feature set and workflow. It just makes sense that something similar will also be part of Groove Agent 4: a dedicated agent for electronic sounds and beat productions that imports samples and comes with a fully loaded library for all kinds of styles. As with the recordings for the acoustic drum sounds, the content for the second agent is already in the making and is being taken care of by several producers from the US, UK and Germany.One of the producers is Allen Morgan who has recently worked with Steinberg on several projects, including his own signature drums series for GA ONE and also mixing presets for Cubase 7’s new channel strip. Just yesterday Allen sent us a nice picture directly out of the recording studio in L.A. As you can see, the content library will have some surprises! (And Allen is serious about it!)

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Just one last word: There have been a lot of questions about the release date of Groove Agent 4. As you can imagine it is a huge project to create a software application from scratch, even for Steinberg, and producing a new library with exclusive content is always a challenge. For all of you who are hoping for a release in the next couple of weeks this might come as a disappointment, but it won’t be possible to complete this project until the end of the year. We really want to make this right so we can offer our customers the best virtual drummer solution. This takes time, but it will definitely be worth the wait.

There are two things about GA4's design could've stood a bit more refinement.

The first is the ability to drag and drop audio files onto the pads from anywhere outside of Cubase. You can already drag and drop audio files from outside Cubase onto a audio Track. So why not skip that extra step (drag audio to Cubase > Drag audio part from Cubase to GA pad) and simply drag any audio file, from anywhere, directly onto a GA pad? (GA's predecessor, the LM-4II, was able to do this).

The second is why the designers persisted with what I consider to be the limited MPC-like 16 pad paradigm. This is a design originally forced by the production cost/real estate restrictions of physical hardware. GA4 is a software GUI….something that could easily be be made to dynamically resize to accommodate up to 128 pads at once, unrestricted by the 80's synth "banking" mentality.

I'd take the convenience of monitoring and pad selection in one go, over nostalgia, any day.

That said, even without these additons, this is still an excellent improvement over its predecessor.

Thanks G-String, that is definately one of the post I remember reading. I don't have GA3 but played with it on another musicians PC once a while back. As a songwriter, one of the things I thought was really cool about Groove Agent 3 was having a virtual "history of drumming" with the timeline feature on the interface. Just wondering if the full version will have this or strictly the MPC style look and feel. So long as the history of drums with all the intros, fills, endings, and variations are included, I'm going to be happy. If not, I'll play more with EZ Drummer and just keep adding EZX packs.

I've been keeping an eye on GA's forum and am very happy to see GA4 surface in this update, even as SE. It's also taken on the same GUI as the Halion family which brings the new Cubase more consolidated and into its own, as a pro DAW.......very clean, very pro!

It's becoming easier to see where they're going with the new development.....which wasn't so evident with 7.0's release. All in all, Bravo Steiny.....can't wait till Thursday!

***I do agree with the OP about limiting GA to MPC style's interface, there's so much more thinking "out the box" to be done here since it's soft and not hardward.

I like the idea of GASE4. I was considering buying Battery 4 standalone, but I will thoroughly test this as a replacement to Battery 3. I like the direction Steinberg has been going.

#OffTopic My next move is to consolidate down my VSTi collection. Ideally I'd like to limit myself to stock Cubase+Halion 5. I currently have Komplete 7 and it's too much for my need.

Since Cubase 4 and beyond I have slowly dwindled my third party VST/Vsti. I have sold off almost all of my 3rd party plug-ins and my workflow has gotten faster in that regard. I'm also more in tune with my tools. The direction Steinberg is going is working for me.